


Last Secret Of The Sea

by tongari



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-02
Updated: 2009-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-26 23:27:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tongari/pseuds/tongari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Yamamoto and Gokudera don't actually talk about (the absence of) their mothers until the very end. Slight spoilers for Gokudera's backstory; exact details on Yamamoto's remains a pleasant mystery to me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Secret Of The Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for [khr_undercover](http://khr-undercover.livejournal.com), round two

Takeshi Yamamoto grew up an only child, motherless, surrounded by the gentle gossip of the elderly regulars in his father's restaurant and the animated discourse of commentators on the sports channel at home. And lots, and lots, and lots of love. As if to make up for his mother's absence, Yamamoto's father raised him with an unconditional and overabundant attention that knew nothing of subtlety, or shame, or not wanting to be hugged in front of schoolmates, or sitting quietly through a baseball game instead of jumping and cheering every time Yamamoto so much as stepped up to bat. Yamamoto was a big strapping boy with a history of accidentally knocking out milk teeth (not his own) on the playground and, later, accidentally dislocating shoulders (not his own either) on the P.E. field; in light of this fact, his classmates declined to comment on his father's behavior. Thus it was in the absence of any peer pressure or snide social commentary that Yamamoto grew up completely and blissfully ignorant of things like subtlety or shame. But he knew love. At least, Yamamoto believed in love the way he believed in the ocean: he thought of it as a vast, awesome, silky-warm thing you could dive into only if you were brave enough, if you didn't mind the initial shock that threatened to leave you frozen and helpless forever, if the permanence and neverending-ness it promised didn't scare you away. And for the brave it held countless treasures - not so much shipwrecked bullion or chests full of gems, but more of black-and-white sea snakes darting away from you, forests of seaweed shivering like ghosts, a tiny translucent shrimp nestled amongst bubbles of pale pink coral. Like coming home to a warm and well-lit kitchen, a fully stocked fridge, a big hand ruffling his hair to say "well done". To Yamamoto love and the sea were places where you discovered things you couldn't really hold in your hand and couldn't always blame for changing your life, but which you were glad to have found, anyway. If his hands hadn't found baseball bats more pleasant to hold than pens, that's what he would have written in a pensive moment, in a letter to a important person; that's what he thought love was.

*

Hayato Gokudera grew up a younger brother and a step-son, surrounded by great expectations and echoing memories of a dead woman that faded from year to year, like the notes he played on her old piano. Also, above all, the smell of his sister's cooking. Nobody in his family of three immediate relatives and a hundred devoted henchmen seemed to understand nausea, loneliness, wanting to be alone; wanting to bury his face in someone's lap and listen to someone else play the song all the way through first so he could understand what it was supposed to sound like, what it was supposed to mean. Halfway through high school, Gokudera left his father and sister and step-mother for a new family, who, at the very least, understood not wanting to play the piano for the rest of his life; also, wanting to hurt somebody else very badly because you thought they had hurt somebody important to you. He only returned to his father once, to announce that he was moving to Japan - "On business, I picked up a lead on something," he had said, trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about. As if he lived in a world where conversations were like piano recitals, and if he got every note right his father would stand up and break into applause. Gokudera's father, who lived in a world where conversations could either kill you or make you very rich, did not stand up and break into applause. Instead he said, "If you know what you're talking about," and motioned to his lieutenant to take the boy aside and see what he was really here for, what he needed. In three days Gokudera found himself on a plane to Narita with a check-in suitcase full of school-inappropriate attire and his hand-carry stuffed with cigarettes from the duty-free. Between his father's lieutenants and the Vongola they had settled his school transfers, accommodation, and black-market supply of explosives. There had also been a piano somewhere in those arrangements but Gokudera had second-guessed his father and told the lieutenant, "No," very loudly, maybe a little too loudly. On the plane he thought about this and wished he had said something else, something clever and cutting. He slouched in his seat and scowled at the TV screen in front of him, but he wasn't really looking at it, didn't see what was on the screen. Gokudera's thoughts were always busy with the future and the past. He wasted none of his time meditating on love, neither what he had experienced of it, nor what he thought it should be like. That's all, that's what he didn't think about love.

*

Yamamoto could not remember his mother at all. When he was younger he would think about how he could not remember and did not miss his mother, and he would feel bad. If he was not helping out at the restaurant, he would change into his gym clothes and go for a run along the river. He ran in a heavy jacket in winter and in a thin cotton shirt in summer, and when the river shimmered cool and inviting beside the dusty track he stripped down to his shorts, hung his shoes in a tree and swam laps until it was dark. All this exercise pushed his growing body into a state of almost perpetual hunger; his father's pride in his ability to eat two bowls or rice per sitting morphed into faint anxiety when he began to eat six bowls of rice per sitting. Their television was always tuned to the sports channel and they ate in the living room watching baseball, or sumo wrestling. When there were no more live broadcasts of either baseball or sumo, they watched replays of English Premier League matches. From a distance, Yamamoto couldn't tell that the men on the screen were playing football half a world away.

"Who's this team?" he asked his father.

"Dunno, I can't keep track of them."

"Oh," Yamamoto said. "Is it, what's his name, Beckham?"

"Maybe."

"Dad, why do you watch football?"

"Sometimes," Yamamoto 's father said, "when you stand on a beach, looking out at the sea, you think it's bottomless, endless, invincible. You think there's nothing stronger or greater or more powerful than the force of the sea; it can overcome everything, withstand anything. But the sea comes from rivers. Sometimes we forget this; when we stand on the beach, we're not looking for rivers. But rivers continuously pour into the sea, even when you're asleep, even though you can't see them. Do you understand?"

"No," Yamamoto said, honestly.

"Okay," his father said. "Well, you see, your mother always thought football was a beautiful game."

"Oh, okay," Yamamoto said. He rubbed his hands across his face, sat up more alertly. The conversation was beginning to take a direction he felt he might be able to understand. "So every time we watch football, we're sort of still doing something with mum, even though it's not really?"

"Something like that," his father said.

The next day, Yamamoto quit baseball and joined the football team. He found it difficult to fit in and understand the rules, the strategies, the whole spirit of the game. His body had become accustomed to the simple act of swinging a bat, dropping everything to fold into a full-out run, following a beaten track faithfully to the end; even being distracted by a river only meant following an alternative route in the same direction. In football they expected you to dodge and dribble and defend, and even if you were attacking you couldn't just charge at people in a straight line because they saw you coming and ran away. If you ran straight into them to stop them getting away the referee gave you a yellow card and said if you did it again he'd tell your mum. Then he looked guilty when you told him you didn't have a mum but he could talk to your dad. Against all odds, Yamamoto grimly stuck it out for a month, during which the football team talked to the baseball team and agreed that everyone would be happier if Yamamoto went back to the baseball team.

"Oh, sure," Yamamoto said when the teachers sat him down and talked to him about it. "I was thinking about it too, only I thought, since my mum likes football--"

"But, Takeshi-kun, you don't have a mum," the football teacher who doubled as the referee said. He was not a bad man and he was usually possessed of a great deal of tact and consideration for young boys' feelings. Perhaps he was just very tired, and maybe a little exasperated, from a month of spending every other practice evening driving wailing boys to the local clinic or A&E while parents yelled at him on the phone and in person. He was in fact such a decent person that he almost immediately realized what he'd said; his face fell, he felt bad. Still, Yamamoto remained smiling. "Not any more," he said, gently, slowly, as if he was used to talking down to adults. "I just wanted to see, what it was she saw."

"If that's what you want, you don't have to move," the teacher said.

"Well," Yamamoto said. " _I_ like baseball better."

*

Gokudera used to think he would never forget his mother. By the time he was fifteen he realized that this needed clarifying. Gokudera would never forget that he'd once had a mother, that she had died when he was very young, that she had played the piano for him and loved him very much. But in time he would forget everything specific about her: the exact way her hair curled below her shoulders, the sound of her voice, the words she had used to explain free counterpoint and sunsets to him. The landscape of his memories changed upon every visit: then a crisp photograph with every detail picked out in light and shadow, now an iridescent blur of colours like an Impressionist painting. Gokudera lived in fear of the day when his memories would paint the suggestion of a portrait, rather than the portrait itself. And he could not look at his sister without a sense of bile rising in his throat. If he looked at Bianchi long enough, would he begin to recall her mother's face, instead of his? He kept the few photographs he had in a box under his bed, guarded it jealously against the cleaners and Bianchi and her mother. From time to time he allowed himself to take them out again and press them flat against the bathroom mirror so he could see her face alongside his. But he always remained conscious of the mirror staring at him, flat and calm as a windless sea. On the surface of the mirror, looking out between his fingers, his mother smiled at him; nine years ago, then ten years ago, then eleven, twelve, forever.

His father never talked about his mother; his father barely talked to him.

*

"Mr Yamamoto," one of the customers was calling. "Mr Yamamoto, there's a boy here, he's asking for you."

"Just one minute, honoured customer!"

The owner of the sushi shop pushed aside the fabric flaps over the doorway to the kitchen and looked out into his restaurant, his domain. It was half past four; there were his three faithful regulars in their seats by the bar and a small gang of tourists at the big table by the window, taking up the entire restaurant with colourful gestures of their long sun-bronzed limbs and outbursts, like fireworks, of guttural foreign laughter. A teenage boy of indeterminate nationality hovered at the opposite end of the bar from the three old men, elbows sprawled across the wood and head hunched low on his shoulders in that lanky boneless manner of all surly teenagers everywhere.

"Ah, Mr Yamamoto," the three old men said in a cheerful and ragged accapella. One of them said, to the boy, "There's Mr Yamamoto."

"I'm so sorry, that's not what I meant," the boy said in fluent Japanese. His face flushed red, he looked down at his shoes and a rush of shockingly blonde hair fell over his eyes. "I meant, not Mr Yamamoto! Just Yamamoto! Yamamoto who is in my class at school."

"Oh, Takeshi," the old men chorused.

"Oh, Takeshi," Mr Yamamoto said. "It's only half past four, practice isn't over yet. Don't worry, you don't have to leave. Sit down and tell me how I can help. You aren't his friend but you have some business with him, am I right?"

"That's not true, well, we're sort of friends, only not, but -- How do you know?"

"If you don't know he plays baseball at school until six," Mr Yamamoto said, "you must not know Takeshi very well. It's all right. Sit down. What's your name?"

"Gokudera," the boy said, "I mean, it's very nice to meet you, Mr Yamamoto."

"The same. You're in Takeshi's year at school?"

"We are," Gokudera said. "But really we're sort of friends because of the T-- Well we are both friends of the same friend."

"Ah, a girl," two of the old men sighed. The third propped his chin on his hands and looked sympathetically at Gokudera.

"No, no, it's not like that, that has nothing to do with it! I just came to ask Yamamoto, Takeshi, what I meant to say was, I'm supposed to pass a message to him, that's all."

"Ah, a challenge between rivals," one of the old men said. The other two murmured their approval through sips of tea. Gokudera's furiously downcast face was a concentrated study in rage and embarrassment. Yamamoto's father regarded him solemnly. In his big brown hands he held a teapot poised over an empty cup, but no tea was pouring out.

Gokudera said, "How about I come back later?"

"So, it's come to this," Mr Yamamoto said. "Gokudera, was it? Do you know, Takeshi's mother said, when I was courting her, and I asked her to marry me?"

"Er," Gokudera said.

"She asked me how we would bring up our children," Mr Yamamoto said. "Of course I said, well, I'll do the best I can.. But she said that wasn't enough. So, for a long time after that, every time we met, we discussed the best way to bring up children. My question hung in the air. She didn't reply and I forgot to ask it again. For days we just talked about children, boys and girls, twins... Finally she asked me, how had I been brought up? And when I told her, she was pleased, and she said, that's right, that's a good way for a boy to grow up and live."

"Lot of trouble for one woman," one of the old men said.

"Oi, oi, you're one to talk," another one said, and he and the other old man laughed. The first old man grumbled and buried his face in his tea cup.

"Anyway," Mr Yamamoto said. "Do you love your mother, Gokudera?"

"Hah," Gokudera said weakly.

"Don't worry," Mr Yamamoto said. "It's like jumping into the sea, it's only cold for the first few seconds. Be cautious, but not afraid. Do you love your mother?"

"Yes!"

The old men stirred and murmured in their seats. Gokudera's eyes were startled, he felt his heart racing against his ribs; he had surprised even himself, so fervent and decisive was his answer. "Yes," he repeated, just to be sure.

"Then you would never do anything you would be ashamed to tell your mother about, after it's over," Mr Yamamoto said. "Please remember this when you are settling your business with Takeshi."

*

And sometimes he would watch Tsuna's mother as she made breakfast for them, or handed out shopping lists, or delegated the cleaning-up of messes and dinner tables in her cheerful and careless manner. He wondered why no one ever ignored her or was rude to her or tried to shirk the duty she had assigned to them. Also, if she ever really minded having so many of them around; after all, when she had married Tsuna's father, she'd only been in love with one person, how was it that she had ended up here surrounded by everyone except the man she had promised to spend the rest of her life with? He thought about his own mother, and what she would be like now if-- But no, he had no time, in the crowded kitchen she was looking at him and beckoning with a wave of her hand. And all he could think of was scrambling to his feet and hurrying to her side.

*

Yamamoto was packing for his first real trip to Italy when he found the hand-written note Dino had tucked into everyone's plane tickets. Yamamoto couldn't read enough Italian yet to understand all of it. In the car he handed it to Gokudera and requested a translation. Gokudera handled it with distaste; like anything else Dino touched, the little memo was torn and spotted with crossed-out mistakes and spelling errors even though it was written in the author's native language. It turned out to be a list of things to do when one is in Rome: Watch out for traffic - even on the sidewalk, be careful what you say with your hands, and don't say anything about anyone's mum.

"What does that mean?" Yamamoto wanted to know, after Gokudera had finished. Gokudera said, "What does what mean?"

"Not saying anything about anyone's mum."

"It's just Dino being cheeky," Gokudera said. "Pay him no attention. He is a joke of a mafia boss. But a very smart one, who loves his family," he added, grudgingly.

"But I think it's all right, to tell each other things about our mums," Yamamoto said. "For example, my mum liked football. I'll never understand why."

"Italy is crazy about football," Gokudera said. "Never understood what the big deal was. What did your mum like about football?"

"I don't know, she never told me."

"Didn't you ask?"

"No, I never got to."

"Oh," Gokudera said. "Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot. Sorry."

"No need to be sorry," Yamamoto said. "I actually like talking about my mum, once in a while! I mean, I know I'm not going anywhere with it, but it's nice all the same. It's like trying to guess, what it's like at the other end of a river, when you're standing on the beach looking at the sea."

Gokudera looked at him; at his easy smile stretching a mile wide, the creases in the corners of his eyes, a face open and fearless and not afraid to love. "Yeah," Gokudera said, "I know."

*

Rivers flow only to the sea, as if there is nowhere else they can go. But the sea can't visit rivers in return; knows nothing about bedrock, subterranean wells, mountains, spring melt, the tragedy of salmon, the aftermath of floods. Perhaps it's just as well.


End file.
